NEWS OF THE MORNING

No. 1: A.D. OK with Pelicans’ flight path — Keeping your superstar happy is job No. 1 for any NBA general manager or head coach who aspires to job security and the latitude to purchase green bananas. So based on some comments Monday by New Orleans tent-pole guy Anthony Davis, GM Dell Demps and new bench boss Alvin Gentry are free to unpack and stay awhile. Davis, on a conference-call interview, talked to TheAssociated Press and others about his $145 million contract extension and the special relationship he had with the terminated (and relocated-to-OKC-staff) Monty Williams. But he apparently sounded just as enthused about the Pelicans’ new direction with Gentry:

Now Davis is eager to see how Gentry’s coaching philosophy will mesh with the Pelicans’ talent. Davis was a high-schooler when Gentry coached the Phoenix Suns to the 2010 Western Conference finals with a fast-paced, high-scoring offense featuring guard Steve Nash and power forward Amar’e Stoudemire. The Pelicans power forward remembers that squad fondly and also has been impressed by the influence Gentry, as a top offensive assistant, has had more recently on recent Western Conference contenders such as the Los Angeles Clippers and defending champion Golden State Warriors.

“I definitely love his playing style,” Davis said. “My teammates, they have a lot of confidence in Coach Gentry. I think that’s why everybody’s coming back.

“In order for us to be that contender that we want to be, we have to have a lot of chemistry, which we have from the past few years,” Davis added. “So it’s good that everybody’s going to come back and we’re going to be able to have that chemistry ready for Coach’s new system.”
…
Last season, the Pelicans qualified for the playoffs for the first time in Davis’ three years as a pro and lost to the Warriors in a sweep. But Gentry told Davis that he was nonetheless impressed with the Pelicans’ talent and had a plan to get the most out it.

“He stated several times he loved our team and was going to try to get everybody back,” Davis said. “That’s the first thing that he said, and I couldn’t agree more.”

It also meant a lot to Davis to see Gentry look into a TV camera during the Warriors’ locker-room celebration immediately after Golden State had won the title, saying, “AD, we’re going to be right back here!”

“That’s the biggest thing that really got me excited because he wasn’t just saying that to say it. He really believes that,” Davis said.

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No. 2:Kentucky’s NBA influence pervasive — Excellence in college basketball doesn’t always translate to the professional ranks, particularly on a case-by-case basis. But in the aggregate, the “Kareem” generally rises to the top — that’s why UCLA, for example, and its John Wooden-produced players held sway for many NBA seasons, in terms of impact on the league. Other powerhouses of the NCAA game — North Carolina, Duke, Indiana — have had enviable influence as well. But according to ESPN.com’sBradford Doolittle, no college program ever has asserted itself at the next level — in both quantity and quality — the way the University of Kentucky is and will, based on his projections of the near-term. Here are some pertinent excerpts of what Doolittle refers to as “historical stuff:”

…Beginning in the 1969-70 season — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar‘s rookie year — Wooden’s players rose to the top of the NBA win shares list. Thanks to Wilt Chamberlain, Kansas had topped the list for much of the 1960s, though it was actually Indiana that held the No. 1 spot the year before UCLA took over. The Bruins proceeded to dominate the rankings for the next decade and a half, finishing No. 1 in every season through 1983-84. UCLA was then brushed aside by a long period of Michael Jordan/North Carolina dominance. Since then, the top slot has changed hands a number of times, with familiar blue-blood programs like UNC, UCLA and Duke usually winning out, but other programs like UConn, Georgetown and even Georgia Tech have taken a turn or two.

…The Bruins’ high-water mark was 71.3 win shares for the 1976-77 NBA season. UNC was No. 2 — at 28.6. Former Bruin Bill Walton led the Portland Trail Blazers to the NBA crown that season, and Abdul-Jabbar was the league’s best player. Jamaal Wilkes, Swen Nater and Sidney Wicks were other ex-Bruins producing at the time. Those 71.3 win shares stand as the record for one school in one season.

For now, anyway. Kentucky is coming on fast. Already, its totals for the past two seasons rank among the top 11 in league history.

That is indeed impressive, yet not as impressive as what might happen this season. To jump all this historical chatter back into the present, let me remind you of the obvious: [Coach John] Calipari most likely will have another seven rookies in the league this season. That could give Kentucky as many as 25 players in the NBA for 2015-16, though not all of them played for Calipari. …

The sheer number of players is impressive, but not as much as the quality. We mentioned [Karl-Anthony] Towns and [Anthony] Davis as possible award winners. Yet John Wall, [Eric] Bledsoe and DeMarcus Cousins could all join Davis in the top 15-20 on the win shares board. And WARP, too, for that matter. In fact, I did some rough translations of my WARP projections into win shares. That’s where the story gets really interesting.

The 25 former Kentucky players I’ve flagged as “active” collectively project to put up 90.3 win shares this season. Let me re-state that for emphasis, like I’m writing a big check: 90.3!

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No. 3:Did Jackson’s miscalculations cost Knicks? — Five months can be an eternity, when something moves as quickly as the NBA economy. So perhaps one shouldn’t judge New York Knicks president Phil Jackson too harshly that some of the assumptions he held about his team and the league in February had changed significantly by July. But according to the New York Daily News, playing off interviews Jackson did with longtime friend Charley Rosen back in February, the Knicks boss was conservative in his estimates of the new salary cap and the skyrocketing contract numbers, up to and including Memphis free-agent center Marc Gasol. The report includes Jackson’s thoughts at the time, too, on Goran Dragic at the trade deadline, on the deal he did make sending J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert to Cleveland and on the city and state taxes that impact New York as a free-agent destination:

Specifically, Jackson told a friend in February that he was wary of giving Memphis’ Marc Gasol a contract with a starting salary of $18 million. Jackson later signed [Robin] Lopez to a four-year deal with an average salary of $13.5 million.

“It’s tricky. The question is who to offer the big money to?” Jackson said in the latest installment of his in-season interviews with his pal Charley Rosen, which was published Monday by ESPN. “A guy who’s an established player or someone who has sky-high potential? Also, there are, and always have been, really good players who are not winners − guys like Joe Barry Carroll, Glenn Robinson and many more whom I don’t care to name.

“And then there’s someone like Marc Gasol, who’s certainly a winner and would have to be paid somewhere around $18 million, a number that would severely limit what we could offer other players. We’d wind up with starters only getting about $5 million.”

It’s clear by that statement Jackson underestimated the rise in the salary cap, which jumped 11% to $70 million. As a result, the Knicks had more money to play with in free agency and Gasol signed a deal with the Grizzlies larger than Jackson’s estimate.

Gasol, a First Team All-NBA selection and former Defensive Player of the Year, averaged 17.4 points and 7.8 rebounds for the Grizzlies last season. Lopez, who lost to Gasol in the playoffs, averaged 9.6 points and 6.7 rebounds last season.

Jackson handed out contracts over the summer worth a combined $96 million to Lopez, Arron Afflalo, Derrick Williams and Kyle O’Quinn. The only max-contract candidate who seriously considered the Knicks was Greg Monroe, who instead signed with Milwaukee.

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No. 4: So many jersey numbers, so few available — Some sociology major might be able to use the Boston Celtics’ jersey-number dilemma as a metaphor for a looming issue in the U.S. workplace: What happens when you’ve got more retirees than active workers? Or something like that. That seems to be a problem for the Celtics, who have retired the numbers of so many great individuals that the franchise is running short of options — at least in terms of traditional, basketball-familiar numbers — for its current and future players. The team’s introduction of some offseason signees had a couple sporting numbers seemingly more fit for the New England Patriots.

It’s a function of the Celtics’ excellence and their zeal in maintaining a tradition that soon might crowd on-court performers over the next century into triple digits. Here’s a synopsis as provided by the FriendlyBounce.com site:

Moving to the middle of the photo, we see Amir Johnson holding the No. 90 jersey. Johnson most recently wore No. 15 with the Raptors, and reportedly wanted the No. 5 shirt with Boston. Johnson had this (via NESN) to say about his number choice:

“Every number 1 through 34 is basically retired,” Johnson said. “My first initial number, I picked No. 5, but I know there was going to kind of be some controversy with that because Kevin Garnett won a championship. So I knew that was pretty much out of the water. My number (15), of course, was retired. And I recently posted a picture on my social network, I don’t know if you guys checked it out, it was a team back in the ’90s — like ’97, ’96 — I played for my first organized basketball team, which was the Burbank Celtics. It was a Celtics team. So I just kind of just put that together. The ’90s were good. I was born in ’87, but the ’90s were good.”

“I was born in ’87, but the ’90s were good” is an awesome sentence. Also, based on this list compiled by the great Basketball Reference, the best player in NBA history to ever wear the #90 is Drew Gooden. So it’s unique, at least!

Further left, [David] Lee chose the No. 42 he originally sported during his days with the Knicks. Nothing to see here.

And, finally, we have Perry Jones III donning that ever-so-rare No. 38. Jones wore the No. 3 shirt in OKC. Of course, Boston’s No. 3 is and forever will be that of the late, great Dennis Johnson. In case you were wondering, that same B-R list names Viktor Khryapa, Ron Knight and Kwame Brown as the best No. 38-wearers the league has ever seen. We’ve hardly even seen PJ3 play meaningful NBA minutes, yet already I feel fairly comfortable saying he’s probably better than all three of those guys.

March 9, 2014 · 7:49PM

Del Harris spent 14 seasons as a head coach in the NBA.

DALLAS — Former NBA coach Del Harris grew up in Indiana idolizing fellow Hoosier Stater John Wooden. During Final Four weekend next month in North Texas, Harris will receive the Coach Wooden “Keys to Life” award at the Legends of Hardwood breakfast.

Harris, 76, coached for more than 50 years, starting at junior high, high school and college before guiding the Houston Rockets, Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers. He spent many more years as a top assistant, including in Dallas under Don Nelson. Harris, who lives in Dallas, remains tied to the game as the vice president of the Mavericks’ D-League affiliate Texas Legends in suburban Dallas. Harris is also a part-time studio analyst on New Orleans Pelicans broadcasts.

The “Keys to Life” honor is akin to a lifetime achievement award. That it is in the name of the legendary Wooden means the world to Harris, who as an ordained minister started out in life as a preacher, “and I still do that most of the time,” Harris said Friday prior to the Mavs taking on the Pacers, “but it became obvious early on that what I was called to do was coach basketball, primarily.”

The significance of coach Wooden’s influence on Harris’ life and his career is best told by Harris, a walking, talking basketball encyclopedia in his own right:

“When I was growing up in Indiana, I grew up 30 miles or so from Martinsville, where he played. When I was quite young and starting to play, the NBA hadn’t started yet. So our heroes in those days in Indiana were the high school players and the college players that had established themselves. Guys like coach Wooden, he was the No. 1 as a player winning the championships in high school and then being at Purdue, the best player at that time, in our little world. Those were our heroes.

“Then in the ’50s in high school, the NBA by then had started up. There were eight teams playing, nothing on TV or anything like that. John Wooden was a guy that was the epitome of basketball for me and for a lot of others when we were kids. And so when I started coaching, he was on top, obviously, and I went wherever I could to listen to his clinics. I went to New York one time just to hear him. I patterned as much as I could from his work and what I learned from him and also from Dean Smith, just a little bit later on he came into our place in 1966-67 and spent a few days in my home. Those two guys were the foundation for what I tried to do. Now, I was a poor representation of John Wooden I’m sure, but later on when I was in L.A., I was able to spend time with him, I sat in on UCLA practices and watched the team practice, I took him to lunch, I sat in his apartment for an entire afternoon and talked about basketball and life.

“My dad, when he died, I was going through his things and he always — he called coach Wooden, coach Wooten, but he also thought Iowa was Ioway, too, so — but anyway he thought he [Wooden] was the best ever and so forth. When going through his things, he had a picture, I don’t know where he got it, of the Wooden family — he had a Wooden family photo among his things. And so I know that, he’s been gone now since 1998 and it was a life-changing event for me when he died, I know that of all the things that might have come my way, this would be the most important thing that my dad would have appreciated.”

Congratulations to Del Harris.

Also to be honored during the Final Four is another Dallas resident and basketball Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman. She has been named the Naismith Outstanding Contributor to Women’s College Basketball.

Lieberman became the first women to coach a professional men’s team when she guided the D-League Legends for one season. She currently joins Harris in the franchise’s front office and is a full-time studio analyst on Oklahoma City Thunder broadcasts.

January 15, 2014 · 4:26PM

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS — Digging into the history, life and times of John Wooden, the man, the myth and the legend, is an undertaking any lover of the game would relish.

For best-selling author, CBS analyst and SI.com college hoops expert Seth Davis, it was a literary pilgrimage a lifetime. And the end result, WOODEN: A Coach’s Life (Times Books, Jan. 14) is masterpiece on arguably the greatest coach and teacher in the history of sports.

We dive in on all things Wooden with Davis on Episode 144 of the Hang Time Podcast. While we had him we also discussed the current state of the college game, the NBA stars of the future incubating in college right now (Jabari Parker, Andrew Wiggins, Julius Randle, Aaron Gordon and the rest) and a host of other topics with one of the foremost authorities on the college game.

In addition, there’s discussion about Hollywood Rick hanging at the Golden Globes, the three-team deal between the Warriors, Celtics and Heat, the Heat’s White House visit (and President Obama‘s defense of Mario Chalmers), the Knicks’ J.R. Smith problem, Bleacher Report‘s Ric Bucher suggesting the Clippers are better off without Blake Griffin and a host of other hot topics around the league.

Toss in Sounds of the Game and the latest installment of Braggin’ Rights (you already know who leads the pack) and we should have all of your bases covered.

Check it out on Episode 144 of the Hang Time Podcast featuringSI.com’s Seth Davis.

February 16, 2012 · 9:30AM

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The basketball perspective? It’s a hot streak. A lot of guys have ridden the comet like this. Mostly All-Stars or even Hall of Famers, but we’re still talking seven games, five of which have been against opponents that today have losing records. This is not about basketball. Jeremy Lin has transcended sports.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Lin is humble and genuine and entered the league with the Warriors last season just wanting to be one of the guys, even if it was an unrealistric goal even then. He was a local product, an Asian-American in the Bay Area and the focus of such an immediate buzz, no matter how many wrongly try to portray February 2012 as some moment of discovery, that Golden State had to call a press conference to introduce an undrafted rookie who would need to improve just to crack the rotation. You don’t have to root for the Knicks to root for Lin.

Welcome to a world where a guy with a Harvard economics degree is considered an underdog.

Lin could retire tomorrow and have made more of a mark in a couple weeks — in New York, in NBA history — than most do in years. Talk about perspective.

June 5, 2010 · 7:54PM

Posted by Scott Howard-Cooper

LOS ANGELES – It will be interesting to see how the Lakers and the NBA pay tribute to John Wooden before Game 2 on Sunday evening. He wasn’t a pro basketball guy, but he was a towering figure in the history of the sport and extraordinarily popular in Southern California, so they will do something.

That’s one of the great things about Wooden. He touched people with grace, humility, devotion and kindness in a way that transcended typical boundaries, just as his personality will do the impossible and overshadow incredible professional achievement. It’s possible that at least four of his greatest players (Walt Hazzard, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton and Marques Johnson) will be in attendance at Game 2 along with good friend Bill Sharman and former peer Tex Winter. Anyone asked will drop whatever they are doing to honor Coach.

Bill Plaschke made a great point in the Los Angeles Times coverage of the passing. Wooden may have been the greatest sportsman to walk a sideline. If anything, the comment isn’t strong enough. For success as a player followed by a dominating run as a coach, for character, for impact on others, the argument can easily be made that Wooden is the greatest sportsman on either side of the line in sports in the United States.

A few other observations as the basketball world celebrates a legend:

*The UCLA dynasty of 10 championships in 12 years is even more impressive with the perspective of time. The Bruins didn’t have to navigate the size of the tournament field that exists now and they had a huge advantage with smart, powerful athletic director J.D. Morgan working behind the scenes to ensure the best draw possible, but title after title after title in the late-60s and early-70s when racial tensions were high, campus protests were common and often violent and the world seemed to be coming apart at the hinges. Wooden had several strong-minded players who lived the conflicts, yet the team held together and mostly remained a cohesive program.

*Wooden was devilishly fun – there hasn’t been enough said about his wonderful sense of humor. This gentle man could deploy a serious needle. Many years after his retirement from the school located in a moneyed section of Los Angeles, Coach was speaking to a class on sports and society at rival USC with Joe Jares, who eloquently covered Wooden’s dominating years for Sports Illustrated. There was a siren off in the distance of the urban campus. “You hear a lot of that USC, don’t you?” Wooden said.

*He won championships every way. He won playing fast with smallball, he won with dominating centers, he won when his best player was a forward. Very different circumstances, same outcome.

*Wooden worked hard to avoid getting caught in the debate of his greatest team or greatest player. Try choosing between Walton or Kareem at center, for example. But he did make a few historically noteworthy IDs during a visit for a book I did on the 100 greatest games in program history. The top performance was not Walton making 21 of 22 shots against Memphis State in the 1973 title game or Abdul-Jabbar scoring 56 points in his varsity debut, but Gail Goodrich hitting Michigan for 42 in the ’65 championship contest. And the most- devastating loss was the double-overtime classic against David Thompson and North Carolina State in the ’74 semifinals. “Because I thought we were a better team than they were and we didn’t play like the better team.”

*I mentioned to Bill Dwyre, my boss at the L.A. Times then and a Wooden friend, that I was surprised Wooden declared his votes after years of deferring. Dwyre agreed, but had an explanation. Wooden was getting up there in the years, he knew he might not be around much longer, and he wanted some thoughts recorded for history. That was in 2001.

*Wooden never picked a favorite player. But Jamaal Wilkes, later to become the 1975 Rookie of the Year with Golden State and four-time NBA champion with the Warriors and Lakers, would be, at worst, very close to the top. Wooden once said that if athletics, academics and citizenship were all taken into account, Wilkes might have been the best of his Bruins.

June 5, 2010 · 6:35PM

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Posted by Sekou Smith

LOS ANGELES — As expected, the passing of famed UCLA coach and basketball icon John Wooden has produced a wide range of emotions amongst the natives here in Southern California.

Lakers star Kobe Bryant is no different, having spent all of his adult life in this town being reminded of Wooden and his legacy by so many inside and outside of the Lakers organization.

Bryant spoke briefly about Wooden and their unique relationship after the Lakers wrapped up practice Saturday at their facility in El Segundo.

“Well, I mean, to say he was a great coach I think doesn’t do it any justice,” Bryant said. “I think his legacy speaks for itself. The personal experience that I’ve had with him was the first time ‑‑ I saw him once at a UCLA basketball game when I was really young and we spoke briefly, and then we spoke at length at Chick Hearn‘s funeral. We spoke for about 25, 30 minutes.

“I think if you talk to any of his players, players that played for him, I think the thing that’s consistent is that he made them better people, you know. I think that would be a true mark of his legacy. The winning and all that stuff, that’s stuff that we all know about.”

Celtics coach Doc Rivers has a framed picture of Wooden on his desk back in Boston. It’s his own tribute to a coaching legend that he holds in the highest regard.

“He was the best coach ever, him and Red Auerbach are the two guys that we talk about, the gods, and there are two of them,” Rivers said. “So the fact that I got to meet him and he actually knew my name, to me blew me away on its own right. I don’t ask for a lot of autographs, and he was one that I wanted, and he was as gracious as we thought he would be. You know, to have those two on your desk, I don’t think you need to further your collection. You know, those are the two best.

“Tough, sad loss, really, for all of us. But with Wooden, I think he’s one of the rare superstars that stood out more about him as a person than he did as a coach or anything. And that’s rare, when you say that about any star in any business.”

Bryant and Rivers weren’t the only ones asked about and prepared to speak about Wooden. Lakers coach Phil Jackson also shared his thoughts:

You know, I guess of the 150,000 people that are reciting John’s legendary fame, I just stand in awe of the guy. I think as a young basketball player growing up and watching the ’62 Bruins, the ’63 Bruins, the era that I came out of high school and watching this team, this pesky team of 6’5″ guys, Keith Erickson and Walt Hazzard, Gail Goodrich roll out a great record and play the incredible defense that they played with the speed that they played at, I think that that was my first awareness of John Wooden.”

“You know, obviously one of his Final Four games was against my colleague, Tex Winter. They had great a rivalry going. Tex always tells the story that his team was ahead by four points going into the last stretch of the ballgame, and there was a blizzard out in Kansas. The game’s in Kansas City which was close to Manhattan, Kansas, where he was coaching at Kansas State, and then the UCLA girls showed up and the cheerleaders led his team on, the Bruins, on to victory. He said, I think the referees got enamored with the Bruins cheerleaders, all those beautiful California girls.”

So that’s a 40‑year ago, 50‑year ago vision in a man who was eventually ‑‑ went on to win nine more championships in a number of years. He did it then with unbelievable talent, talent started coming in his direction with obviously Lew Alcindor ‑ Kareem Abdul‑Jabbar ‑ and a myriad of other players that came in there. But that first initial group won has always kind of a special place as to his activity, how he prepared his teams, their defensive mindset, and the things that he really believed in basketball as a coach.

You can expect the testimonials and reflections to continue to flow about Wooden, one of the greatest teachers, coaches and men to grace us all with his presence.